AC-2025-LON-000933 - [2025] EWHC 2745 (Admin)

Mr Ahluwalia argues that the Council failed to apply its own policy in so far as the housing allocation scheme, properly construed, required that the Claimant be given a Band date of 10 May 2021. He contends that the Claimant was placed in Band 3 on 10 May 2021 for overcrowding, and that her circumstances have not changed since, given that she remains at the same property with the same household constitution. As she was entitled to Band 3 under both the old and new rules, her Band date should reflect the date that she was initially given, which was 10 May 2021.

It is no answer, he suggests, that the new scheme has a different criterion for Band 3, because the evidence shows that not all the existing Band 3 applicants had their Priority Bands reset on the coming into force of the new scheme. He also points to paragraph 1.1 of the new scheme, which provides: “The higher the Band, the quicker an applicant can expect to be offered a property to move into. Unless exceptional circumstances apply, within Bands those who have been in that Band or on the Housing Register the longest will be prioritised first” [emphasis added by Claimant].

Mr Ahluwalia further argues that, in any event, the decision of 9 December 2024 was irrational or, if it flowed from a reasonable interpretation of the 2022 scheme, then the scheme itself is irrational because it required the Claimant to be given a later Band date, even though her circumstances had not changed. He argues that everyone who was in Band 3 under the 2017 scheme on the grounds of overcrowding by one bedroom, and who was permitted to move from Band 4 to Band 3 under the 2022 scheme, should be permitted to retain their initial Band date.

Mr Bates KC submits that the scheme was applied rationally and reasonably. He contends that there is nothing in the scheme, either expressly or impliedly, which required the Defendant to give the Claimant an effective date of 10 May 2021.

The Council had introduced a new eligibility criteria under which all the applicants who has previously been recorded as overcrowded by one bedroom were placed in Band 4 “overcrowded by one bedroom”. It provided, however, for a means by which applicants placed in Band 4 could apply to be moved into Band 3, the band for those considered to be “overcrowded by one bedroom and statutorily overcrowded”. The Claimant is, therefore, in a better position, even though her Band date has been fixed as 31 October 2022, and not 10 May 2021, because she was moved up to Band 3.

He submits that the scheme cannot be operated in such a way as to assign the Claimant a date before it was even introduced, and nor is this required by the precepts of fairness or any kind of legitimate expectation. If the Council were to backdate the Claimant’s Band date to 10 May 2021, it would be treating her differently to the other applicants on the housing register.